William Davies
was the eldest of nine children from Tyn Mynydd Rhiw. He began work as a farm
boy at Penarfynydd, but he soon tired of this, and one day he set out for Porthmadog
with just two half crowns in his pocket to start a career at sea. From his
humble beginnings as a deck boy on one of the little schooners, he went on to be
Captain early on in his twenties, and soon after became Extra Master.

During the World
War II, William was Master of the Voltaire a ship belonging to the Lamport and
Holt company of Liverpool, which had been taken over by the Admiralty in
1939 and converted to an armed merchant cruiser. On the morning of April
the 9th 1941, while en
route for Freetown West Africa to escort a convoy in the Atlantic, a
cargo ship came into sight, and the Voltaire steamed towards her under the
assumption that she was in some kind of trouble, however when they got close to
her, the ship turned out to be the German auxiliary
cruiser Thor, and she opened
fire on the Voltaire.During
the subsequent naval battle, which ended with the destruction of the British
ship. Captain William Davies
along with 15 other seaman lost their life. The remaining 197 crew members were
rescued . No British signals were sent because the
Thor's first salvo had destroyed the Voltaire's radio room. Capt Otto
Kähler of the Thor radioed news
about the sinking of the Voltaire back to Germany. His message failed to mention
the fact that the Voltaire had been unable to transmit any messages about the
battle, so the British Admiralty did not know that it had lost
the vessel. But the British were soon to be informed, as the Germans
announced the next day that a warship operating in foreign waters has sunk the
British auxiliary cruiser Voltaire. The announcement
demonstrates how proud the Germans were to make this victory public. The Germans
added that the 'warship' (the Thor was not mentioned by name) had also sunk the
British merchant freighter Britannia on the 25th of March, as well as the Swedish vessel
Trolleholm. The fact that
the latter, despite going down on the same day as the Britannia, was not even
mentioned, shows that the Germans felt no need to emphasise that it also sank
ships of neutral nations like Sweden, and on the other, that it had primarily
targeted Britain vessels.

Thor, formerly the Santa Cruz,
belonging to Oldenburg-Portugiesischen Dampfschiffs-Reederei. Built in 1938,
3862 grt, top speed 17 knots. Thor started her raids in June of 1940, at
first captained by Otto Kähler, later by Günther Gumprich. Thor was
destroyed in Yokohama on Nov. 30-1942 by an explosion in the tanker Uckermark
that was tied up alongside here. She sank with the loss of thirteen crewmen.

~~~~~~~

The Valtaire's survivors
were taken back to a prison
camp in Germany. And at
the Stalag B camp near Lambstropt where they were being held, was a Welsh
prisoner of war named Evan Davies, he was one of William’s younger brothers,
and it was from the survivors that he learned the sad fate of his brother.

We don't know much about William Davies’s life,but from what we do have, we can quite clearly see that the young lad
from Tyn Mynydd, Rhiw went on to have a remarkable career at sea.